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Last week I was wondering if I could combine two plots into one. One idea was for an Event and one for Characters. While I still think they could have meshed, the character story took off on it’s own into a short story. Now the question is what to do with the Event idea, how [...]
Finishing up the series on plot: We’ve talked about the outline level of plot, plotting with scenes and now we’re at a finer granular level as we talk about pacing of a novel. Pacing Helps Plot Succeed Nick Lowe, in his article, The Well-Tempered Plot Device, criticizes many well-loved fantasy novels because of their use [...]
Does your Scene Pass this Checklist? Where/When. (Setting) Did you orient the reader at the beginning of the scene? Does the reader know where this takes place: room in house, city, state, country, etc? Does the reader know when this takes place: time of day, season of year, place within chronology of story? If the [...]
Scene Quiz: From a Harvard Bar to Your Scenes Yesterday, we talked about what you’d find if you dissected a good scene. Today, we’ll apply this information by studying a scene from the classic movie, Good Will Hunting. (Warning: Adult language) Then, you can apply it to your own scenes.
Anatomy of a Scene If you dissect a scene, what do you find? Sandra Scofield, in The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer lays out a simple, yet insightful discussion of this concept and it’s usefulness to a novelist. Here are the basics of a scene: Event and Emotion: Something happens and
OK, you’ve narrowed down your story to a plot template and you know what characters, events, settings are implied by the story you are thinking about and the plot template. You know some of the pitfalls of plots. Now what? It think this is the hardest part of plotting a novel, going from generalities to [...]
This is part of a continuing series on plot. Plotting with Scenes The second level of plotting is Scenes: this is where the story moves from the cliched outline level to the specific level of your story. Moving from Abstract to Concrete Suppose you want to tell the story of Cinderella, what scenes would you [...]
Agent Emphasizes Need for Plot The Guide to Literary Agents blog has a new agent interview with Kristin Nelson, who writes the PubRants blog. Since we’re talking about plotting a novel, this remark jumped out at me. When GLA asked what what she’s looking for right now, Nelson said: KN: I’d love to see more [...]
Continuing the series on plot: Plot templates are helpful in telling an author the possible events for different sections of the story. I like to consult these when I’m first thinking of a idea for a novel and when I start a revision. I want to know what is typical for the type story I’m [...]
Plot: 3 Levels of Detail There are three levels of plot: outline level, scenes and pacing. The outline level is the most abstract level, or the skeleton level, where each section of a story is categorized in some general way. We do this by dividing stories into acts, for example. Some prefer 3 acts, some [...]
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